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Hello Sunday Morning - and the hangover's gone

Jill Stark

Chris Raine (right) who quit drinking alcohol for a period of 12 months of his own choosing with friend David Hateley at the Mooloolaba Surf Club. Photo: Steve Holland

His friends thought he was mad. A year without alcohol? It would be social suicide. For a 22-year-old, whose weekends were spent with mates in a blur of binge drinking, self-imposed sobriety was a daunting challenge.

But Chris Raine's year off the booze not only boosted his confidence, it provided a unique insight into why young Australians from Castlemaine to Cairns are regularly drinking themselves into oblivion.

What began as a playful proposition over a beer with his mates has turned into a project that Raine hopes will unlock the secrets driving our entrenched binge drinking culture.

Hello Sunday Morning- the blog the young Brisbane man set up last January to document his alcohol-free odyssey - is gaining momentum, with 11 other bloggers following his lead and more than 600 people joining the project's Facebook site.

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Raine, who used to down 15 to 20 drinks a night most weekends, says the project aims to achieve what government campaigns have failed to do - ask young people why they drink.

''If I'm a young person and I want to choose to not drink, there's a lot more to consider than getting beaten up or raped or being in a car accident. They're far from my mind as to the motivation behind drinking,'' Raine says.

''Young people realise that drinking irresponsibly causes death and horrible social things, but either consciously or subconsciously it's actually more valuable in a young person's mind to take that risk and for them to be part of a society that incurs those costs, for the value that it [drinking] has socially.''

On January 1, when his year of sobriety was up, Raine, now 23, found his desire for alcohol had greatly diminished and while he now enjoys the occasional beer' he says it is no longer the lifeblood it once was.

Through research conducted among his friends and visitors to the website, he discovered three main drivers of binge drinking among young people.

One was a sense of identity that comes from being seen to drink the most fashionable brands. Secondly, alcohol boosted confidence, acting as a social lubricant. The third, and perhaps most concerning, was that young people drank to deal with emotions such as grief, happiness or anger.

Raine says to change that culture, young people need to believe in an alternative that will improve their lives, give them a sense of purpose and help them build meaningful relationships.

For Raine, his journey without alcohol was an emotional one, in which he realised alcohol had become the glue in his quest for social cohesion with friends, family and the opposite sex.

''It was like I needed that external stimulus in my life or it's like a social death . . . Not drinking provided the space for me to actually do the work.

''It took a year for me to finally deal with everything that had been under the surface but not dealt with because I'd write myself off every weekend and hide behind that.''

Raine, who lives in Queensland, will move to Melbourne next month to garner support from drug and alcohol agencies such as the Australian Drug Foundation and Turning Point.

A survey of 250 people who contributed to the HSM website found that only 9 per cent said government alcohol awareness campaigns had an impact on their drinking behaviour.

Conversely, Raine cites a recent Nielsen poll that showed 71 per cent of young people trust peer-to-peer communication.

He insists the project is not a modern day temperance movement. It is about young people inspiring their peers in ways that no government campaign can.